Adventures in Ian Land!
Or, How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate Virtually Everything!

So, I'm going to Mt. Royal College. Whoo-freaking-hoo, you say. You're 21 years old, a fairly smart guy... why haven't you got a degree already? you say.. Well lay the fuck off, fictional stuff-sayer! I've been busy. Anyway, I'm going now. And it should be cake... but no, nothing is ever easy. First off, I gotta get a student loan. And that's tough, right? It's really hard to get a student loan, especially if your parents have got money, right? WRONG! It took me like 3 minutes to get my student loan, if you don't count the 3 days of waiting for approval, which I don't.

They approved me too fast. I should have taken it as a sign, because nothing is ever that easy. But I was cocky. Got the loan, registered myself up for a whole mess of classes. Took some entrance exams and smoked those bitches like it weren't no thang. I'm good to go, right? WRONG!

They send you these forms, and they say that you have to get them filled out by someone at the college. So I call the College. Everyday. For 11 days. No one ever answers the phone. I leave messages. Everyday. For 11 days. Finally someone calls back. I'm not at home. So I did what any rational, reasonable human being would do. I let forth a stream of profanity that would have disfigured hell, and I conked my head against the wall until I felt better.
Then I called back. And called, and called and called. And called. (And Called.) Finally someone picks up the phone. *Trumpets Sound* Huzzah! Praise
be to whomever!

Me: "Hi, I'd like to make an appointment to get my forms filled out, please"

Her: "Oh, you don't need an appointment, you just drop the forms off then
come back and pick them up."

Me: "Oh. I... see. You. Should. Put. That. In. Writing. Somewhere.

Her: "Sir, what's that strange grinding noise?"

Me: "Those would be my teeth. Thank you for your help. I shall drop off my
papers immediately."

Her: "Okay, see you soon. Hee hee"

Me: Conk, conk, conk.

So I get on the bus. I go to the college. I hand my forms to the hideously chipper woman I spoke to on the phone. I've calmed down by this point, but
my rage has diminished only in volume, not extent. It usually takes a hamburger to calm me right down. I am so angry that I do not realize until much later that she was actually pretty decent looking. She tells me that my forms will be ready on friday, and all I will need to finalize everything is one of 18 forms of identification, none of which I own.

Sin Card? Lost it.
Photocopy of Sin card? No.
Recent Tax Return? Lost it.
T4? Lost them.
Mummified Yak carcass? Nope.

On and on the list went, my soul sinking lower as the bullet points did. Sweet Mary mother of merciful fucking CHRIST!", I was heard to remark to no
one in particular. Sure, they'll approve me for a huge freaking loan, but I can't actually have the money... no. That would be too simple. Somewhere, government people sit around in what I'm sure are very comfy offices and define policies that would be absolutely perfect at stopping crime, if it weren't for the fact that not all criminals are lobotomized ten-year-olds! We'll need to see a SIN card. Because no one could steal a SIN card! IT NEVER HAPPENS!". Clearly, in the minds of these crack government policy makers, a peice of plastic with some numbers stamped on to it, or a reasonable facimile thereof, in fact represents the most insurmountable security failsafe that human minds could concoct. Until an Alien civilazation shares with us the ancient wisdom of the FUCKING COSMOS, SIN cards must remain the only acceptible form of identification!

So here I am, scant hours from having to go to the college and reclaim my god-forsaken forms, wondering how I'm every going to convince them to give
me my damned money without pleading to some federal oversight committee. While I'm not totally certain, I don't think my tuition is going to pay itself. Unless I can somehow get my tuition a job. But those are hard to get without SIN cards as well. I don't how I'm going to get books. I suppose I could steal them, but there is probably a downside to that approach that isn't immediately presenting itself. But I have a new laptop computer for school. So that's good right? Right? RIGHT!?

---------

"Yay!" thought little Ian as he giddily unpacked his new toy "A laptop computer of my very own. I will love it and squeeze it and play with it everyday! I will sing it songs and tell it stories, and -- what the hell!? What is all the freaking software!? Didn't the last owner of this thing ever turn it on!?"

There, on my lovely new-to-me Compaq Presario 2160, was evidnce that Satan himself walks the earth, and works for the Compaq corporation. Disney Preschool! Say and Learn! Mapmaker 97! MS Office and MS Works on the same damn machine. That's liking having a Ferrari and a Plymouth Omni in the same garage... God help me... TelusPlanet internet. Dial-up! Oh, the humanity.

Actually, it wasn't so bad. I looked upon it as a challenge. Churn and Burn, I thought maniacally to myself, and set about removing the offending collections of Satan's 1s and 0s.

Disney Software, gone. Right away. These people make software like Dr. Kevorkian treats patients.
MS Works, gon-- Oh, wait... Install CD? Don't have it. Don't fuck with me, Works, you're gone anyway...
Et tu, Office 97? Same trick? Huh, Microsoft is unoriginal. I can deal with you, too. Although that was a hell of lot trickier. I don't recommend a
manual uninstall of Office to anyone below the rank of minor computer deity.

Moving along... Bitware Fax? Sounds cheap and crappy... but I may need fax drivers soon, and don't want to be caught without them... hmmm...

This is where it all goes to hell. One moment of doubt, and I lost my stride I eventually spare Bitware Fax the brunt of my uninstalling frenzy, but suddenly it becomes an uphill battle on a slippery fucking slope. My the time I hit the dreaded Compaq utilities, I'm a nervous wreck. These are the
real big boys. Deleting these could go either way... one wrong file gone missing and the damn thing wont start. I know this. I know this way I once knew that I was invincible. The seemingly-uninstallable system utility hadn't been made that I could not ecshew with calculatingly reckless abandon. But I'm overthinking myself. I've only had this thing for a few hours... If I discover some fatal flaw, I'm never gonna be able to give it back with these programs missing. This is the point of no return.

I stare at the machine. It stares back, utterly implacable, it's single rectangular eye flashing at 66 KHz per second at a resaonable crisp .29 dot pitch.

It was it or me. Man or machine. The evolved sophistication of earthly biology's penultimate creature, or a two-bit IBM knockoff with a nifty feature set.

I blinked. I was tired, I needed rest. I was so tired that I could already tell that during retellings of this story I would totally unable to keep my tenses straight. The computer could have one more night with it's precious software.

All night, I tossed and turned, constantly aware of it's nefarious electronic plotting. Microscopic swtiches flipping at light-speed in earily silent comtemplation of what errors and faults to lay down in my path to perfectly customized computer glory.

But the morn brought new vigor to my typing fingers, and within the hour I had broken the beast's back. Custom startup logo? In place. New version softwares installed? Check. Hard Drive clean of temp files? Of course. Those Compaq system programs exiled to the electronic afterlife, never to return. Check, check and double-check.

Once again secure in my absolute mastery over the computers of the earth, I sat back, awash in manly feelings of conquest, much as cave men must have after a long and arduous trek through primordial jungles to uninstall the first primitive softwares from their laptops.